Hyundai's Childhood Cancer Campaign Runs From Hospital Wards To NFL Stadiums

This month, Hyundai put vehicle-launch weight behind a charity campaign. The Mark of a Warrior supports Hyundai Hope on Wheels, the pediatric cancer nonprofit the automaker and its dealers have funded since 1998. It runs across broadcast, streaming, audio, social, and the dealer network, and much of what the campaign asks people to do happens away from a screen—in hospitals, stadiums, and dealerships.

Sean Gilpin joined Hyundai Motor America in 2023 and became Chief Marketing Officer the following year. He arrived from INNOCEAN USA, Hyundai's agency of record and the shop that built this campaign, where he rose from media director to chief business officer over seven years. Gilpin's earlier work ran through dealer-level automotive advertising, programmatic media, and a first stint in Hyundai's retail marketing team.

"We've done handprint paint ceremonies with Hyundai Hope on Wheels for 28 years, and the kids wanted a voice to make them feel confident and strong. Across cultures, countries, and for centuries, war paint has been a way of showing support and intimidating the enemy, so we transformed our Hyundai paint into war paint," says Gilpin. He rates this campaign above Hyundai's FIFA World Cup work on scale, counting dealer involvement and the number of channels running. Hope on Wheels has put more than $300 million into pediatric cancer research, ranking it among the largest nonprofit funders in the country.

Bringing survivor insights to life

Gilpin's team interviewed Hope on Wheels ambassadors during the strategy phase, asking what Hyundai could do for children going through treatment now. Five childhood cancer survivors front the campaign, and all of them sat for those conversations. What came back covered both the message and the practical side of a hospital stay. "It would be great if marketing could help make sure that the kids that are in the fight today hear this voice of confidence," Gilpin says. "Because not every day that you're walking in for your daily chemo treatment are you feeling one hundred percent confident in the fight."

Standard hospital gowns open at the back so staff can reach a port or an IV line, and a child wearing one is exposed through hours of treatment. One ambassador's mother had been sewing pajamas into a version that covered her daughter without blocking the access. Hyundai took the idea to Brave Gowns and commissioned armor-inspired designs, more than 6,000 of them this year, each with a message stitched inside. "I was personally in D.C. at Children's National and saw the kids come out from the children's ward to see these gowns on the table," Gilpin explains. "They all ran to change, and they were dancing around pretending to be warriors."

Warriors on the field

Between September and January, Hyundai is staging Warrior Rallies at several key sporting fixtures. They started with the Houston Texans and continue through the Los Angeles Rams, Inter Miami CF, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Patients, survivors, and the doctors who treated them go onto the field at each one. "There's also a lot of dealer point of sale, and a lot of that content will also be featured at the Hope rallies," Gilpin notes. "In stadium, kind of out-of-home, we've got the digital ribbons, banners, and boards sponsorships."

The rallies reach four cities, and Hyundai's dealers cover everywhere else. All 855 of them are running showroom events, hosting more than 100 blood drives and handing out Warrior Badges that owners stick on their cars. Roughly 42 handprint ceremonies and gown deliveries are booked over the same months, and Gilpin says all of that started before the first ad ran. "Our dealers were so touched by this that they're matching that donation," he adds.

Hope, here to stay

Hyundai's media plan runs through NBC Sunday Night Football, Amazon, iHeartRadio, and SiriusXM, with the Jonas Brothers, Conan O'Brien and Jordan Chiles among the talent involved. Staff at several partner companies visited children's hospitals while the campaign was being planned, and Gilpin says what they offered changed after those visits. "They saw the campaign is truly about helping kids and families, so they volunteered areas that aren't normally commercially available," he explains. "They put it into the actual programming, not in the ad supported spaces."

The brand also launched a challenge on the fitness tracking app, Strava. It asked participants to cover 400,000 miles between them, one for every child diagnosed with cancer worldwide each year. Hyundai promised a million dollars if they reached the goal, and they achieved it in a day. The company raised the goal to 800,000 miles and two million dollars, and people cleared it in two more days. About 100,000 people have now logged more than 3.3 million miles.

Hyundai kept its Hope on Wheels marketing small for years, running most of it during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in September. The company's global and North American chief executives have since told Gilpin to run it year-round. "We want Hope on Wheels to be an evergreen message for us," Gilpin concludes. "With the feedback we've gotten from those families, from the doctors and the hospitals and everyone else, we found our voice."